Project Love
by Tori Masen-Cullen
Summary: Twenty One year old Bella Swan is given a chance to make a name for herself in the corporate world when asked to go and work on a major Marketing Project in NY. What or who will she find in the Big Apple AH/OCC Canon Lemons


**Hi All...Who's ready for Breaking Dawn? I'm on a daily hunt for new clips and I have to say that Edward is looking mighty fine, if any one is going to the London Permiere I will see you there!**

**First I would like to say a huge thank you too all that have PM'd me and sent in reviews for Karma and First Light. I am sorry I haven't updated in a long, long time and I plan to rectify that by going over them later today and see if I can get the flow of them again.**

**Out of Her League was taken down as I edited it to make it my own and entered it into a competition that wouldn't allow it to be published elsewhere, unfortunatly nothing came of it but I am reworking it again and aiming to get it published, I will keep you updated on that.**

**Well this is something new that I came up with, I'm not sure where it is going yet so I will be finding out as you do haha.**

**As always, I don't own Edward or any othr aspect of Twilight that honor gose to SM.**

**P.S My spell check isn't working . . . sorry!**

Chapter 1

It was still dark as I took my first tentative steps out of my shabby apartment building and onto the icy Seattle sidewalk, and no matter how much I knew I would regret it at the end of the month when ferreting down the back of my couch and rummaging through shit-draws for scraps of change in order to feed myself in the run up to payday, when I quite literally _slipped_ in to the back seat of the awaiting cab and gave him directions, I knew that this was the only way I was going to make it into the office in one piece this morning. Bella Swan, three inch pumps and an almost invisible sheet of black ice equals a morning in the ER and an extremely irate boss.

My position as the Assistant, to the Assistant of the Head of Marketing at Skin Deep, wasn't exactly what I had in mind when I walked out of the hallways of UW for the last time, Marketing Degree in hand and my success at graduating top of my class, hanging in huge purple bags under my eyes. Skin Deep wasn't the problem, not in the slightest, our parent company MC Pharmaceuticals was at the top of the Dow Jones, voted the number one company to work for in numerous business publications and had been number one in the fortune 500 for the past four years, no the problem was three fold, firstly I had hoped that the blood, sweat and tears I had shed through high school and college would have earned me more than a very, very basic entry level position in the corporate world, but the current economical climate practically rendered my hard earned Scholarship to UW and my Marketing Degree utterly useless. What makes it worse is my boss, Victoria Wild – and the second part of my three fold problem – is completely. . .completely. . .ugh, there are _no_ words that could adequately describe the shear stupidity and lack of common sense that surrounds Victoria like an aurora and she seems to have a natural talent for evasion when it comes to work, so while she sits at her desk filing her nails and earning her level three pay grade by sucking James Hunter – the third problem – off under his desk, I work my ass off completing her reports and presentations and covering her mistakes while earning $15,000 less than she does. I've wondered more than once in the last three months whether James found her on a street corner and gave her the job as a way to get MCP to pay for his hooker. So that leaves us with my third and final problem and the reason that I am sat in a cab at six fifteen on a Monday morning, James Hunter, Head of Marketing and the biggest bastard on the face of the planet, his steel grey eyes, dirty blond hair and evil smirk give me the willies. He's nasty, demeaning, short tempered, sly and honestly scares the shit out of me.

Today is January 7th and I've been looking forward to this day since I started working for James and Victoria three months ago. Skin Deep are launching a new men's skin care range to rival L'Oreal, we're going in guns blazing, with no less than fifteen products, a huge ad campaign, TV, radio, magazine, billboard, you name it, actor Robert Pattinson and New York Giants quarterback Emmett McCarty are our front men. So it's a huge investment, huge risk, the top guys are involved, and it's being launched in New York, where James and Victoria will be, for the next _eight weeks!_

Heaven.

Fortunately when I climbed out of the cab ten minutes later, the sidewalk had already been gritted and I managed to make my way into the building without falling on my ass. The lobby was more or less empty, just a few early morning stragglers and two of the security guys that man the front security desk where we have to swipe in and out everyday, I smiled at them and quietly wished them a good morning as I swiped in, not knowing them well enough to open a conversation and not having time too even if I did. I had final adjustments to make for Victoria this morning on tomorrows presentation, God only knows how she is going to manage in New York when James asks her to actually do some work, the time difference is going to make it impossible for her to send anything over to me. If you ask me, to have Victoria anywhere near this launch is a disaster waiting to happen, it's too big, to important for to have someone with the attention span of a gnat and the IQ of a three year old to be even remotely involved.

"Isabella, my office, five minutes!" _Jesus Christ!_ I almost jumped out of my skin as the sharp demand echoed around the room. I spun quickly and just caught the back of James, as he stormed into his office and slammed the door. _Oh shit!_ My heart was racing a mile a minute and I glanced hopefully at the desk across from mine, expecting to see Victoria jump up and scurry into his cave, with her false lashes fluttering and collagen lips already half way open. . .as usual, but then I realized that it was only six thirty and would have laughed at my own stupidity if I wasn't on the verge of a panic attack.

Quickly, I dumped my bag and coat on my chair, grabbed a pad and pencil and strode as confidently as I could over to James' door. _You can do this, don't show weakness or he'll eat you alive!_ Taking a deep breath to steady myself I rapped my knuckles on the wood and opened the door.

"You needed to see me?" I squeaked, _great, just perfect, Bella!_

James sat leaning back in his high-back, black leather chair, his suit jacket had been removed, his shirt sleeves were rolled up and his arms were resting at the back of his head, his eyes wondered from mine and followed the line of my body, slowly, before returning to my eyes once again with an evil smirk forming at his lip, I wanted to be sick and I was suddenly hyper aware that we were the only two people here right now, my fear spiked and my heart took off again double time. He didn't say anything for the longest time and I shifted nervously from foot to foot as I waited.

"Victoria had to leave the company unexpectedly, I need a replacement before two this afternoon, as we're short on time, that replacement will have to be you, finish the reports that I've forwarded to your inbox, change Victoria's flight tickets into your name, go home, pack a bag and be in the domestic departure lounge at SeaTac no later than one, make me look like a fool or fuck this up and it will be the last thing you ever do. . .at Skin Deep, of course," he smirked. I on the other hand shivered at his poorly veiled threat and just stood there in stunned silence.

"I'm sorry, what?" I gasped out, eventually!

"Do you have a problem following simple instructions, Isabella?"

"No, Sir."

"Then I suggest you get to it," it wasn't a suggestion at all, it was an order and as much as he terrifies me and as much as I wanted to tell him to shove the job up his ass, I couldn't, this was a huge opportunity for me, I was going to New York, to work with the Marketing Project team at MCP, on the biggest consumer launch in a decade! So I said the only logical thing I could.

"Yes, Sir" and hi-tailed it out of his office as fast and my little legs could carry me.

The fist thing I did when I got to my desk – aside from booting up my computer – was call the airline, I had no idea what reports James had sent over to me but once I started on them I didn't want to have to break off to make a phone call, as it was a business booking it was relatively easy to make the changes, I also called my neighbor, Mrs. Simmkins, knowing that I wouldn't have time to nip in and see her before I left and also knowing that she was one of the strange few that would be up at this hour. Mrs. Simmkins is the lovely old lady that lives across the hall from me and if I was going to be in New York for the next eight weeks I would need someone to check my mail box, luckily I had no pets and no plants for that matter that would need to be looked after but it would be nice to know that someone was watching my apartment for me.

I also needed to call my dad, but knowing he would have a hissy-fit when he found out I was not only going to New York, but that I was going with my boss, the guy I had complained about more than once to Charlie, I figured that it would be best to call him from New York least he come down to Seattle to bash some sense in to me. What I would do though is follow his advise and pack my can of pepper spray to carry with me. . .once I got off the flight of course, I highly doubt that I would be able to get through customs with that in my carry on.

With the two easiest jobs out of the way, I set up my IPod and pulled James' report up on screen and almost instantly reconsidered my phone call to Charlie, it was the biggest cluster-fuck of non-information I had ever seen and no amount of tinkering and playing around with it was going to make it any better, so I was gonna have to start again. I didn't know who had set it up, but who ever it was, was an idiot. By the time I had redone the report - four hours later - the campaign cost had increased by three million dollars as some jack ass had missed three lines off TV ads from that totals column, but the projected sales had increased by a whopping sixty five million for the year, I couldn't even work out the formula that had been used to get to the lesser amount and to be honest I didn't care, as long as my figures were correct - which they were!

When I looked at the time it was eleven thirty and if I was gonna get home, pack enough clothes to get me thought a couple of weeks at a time and get to SeaTac, I needed to leave now! So I quickly shot an email over to James with the new report, briefly explaining the problems that I had found and silently praying that he hadn't sent the previous figures off to HQ. I closed down my laptop shoved it and my power cord into my bag and ran for the elevator.

Knowing that all of my living costs for the next eight weeks would be going through the company expense account, I didn't think twice about flagging down then first available cab, the rain that was guaranteed to turn Seattle into an over sized ice rink come morning, was coming down in the bucket load and just the short thirty second totter from the office doors to the awaiting cab was enough to plaster my dull brown hair to the sides of my face. The weather in Seattle was crappy at the best of time, but the winter months were hideous and almost enough to cause me to pack up the life I had created for myself over the last five years and go high-tailing back to sunny Florida to live with my unreliable, intrusive, but loving mother. . .but not quite.

It was only a short drive to my apartment, but by the time I got there is was already ten to twelve and it would take me a good thirty minutes to get to the airport. With that in mind I slipped my shoes off as soon and I had crossed the threshold to my building and jogged up the three flights of stairs and into my tiny apartment. After a quick call to the cab company, requesting a cab for twenty past twelve, I delved in to my scanty wardrobe and began pulling out a variety of outfits. Knowing that I was going to be at HQ all of my best work clothes were a must, but on top of the two pairs of black trousers, my navy pin stripped three piece suit, two business dresses, three skirts and a few blouses and smart tops that were carefully places into my suit carrier, I grabbed, jeans, t-shits, jumpers, underwear, PJ's, shoes and my black cocktail dress - just in case, and piled them all in to my small suitcase along with my toiletries and make up. Before I had managed to zip it up a car horn blared and I raced to the window to see that my cab had arrived, _shit! _I didn't have time to go through my fridge and cupboards to remove anything that would perish over the next eight weeks, so I penned a quick note to Mrs. Simmkins asking if she would mind doing the honors for me and shoved it in a wayward envelope along with my spare keys, to push into her mail box on my way out.

With my case, suit holder, laptop bag and purse weighing me down, I somehow managed to make it outside and into the warm dry cab without killing myself, and breathed for what felt like the first time since I stepped out of my apartment this morning.


End file.
